Alex R. wrote:
Besides the valid point that the public should have a
say in the
logo outcome it is not unreasonable to require some kind of
registration before voting. That is done in practically all
democracies including member and shareholder corporations.
I didn't know we had become a democracy. I've seen no evidence that
Wikimedia is anything but a proprietary organization.
Otherwise someone with a lot of friends can stuff the
ballots.
There is the question of fixing the registration deadline date:
has it past, is it now or is it a future date? Past dates prevent
anyone from signing up under many names, a future date will
allow more people to register effectively giving newcomers
a voice.
The best way to deal with possible ballot box stuffing is still to
create a situation where it doesn't matter anyway. Anything else
devotes an awful lot of energy on a purely speculative problem. I don't
dispute that we have had a few people who voted two minutes after they
found out about Wikipedia, but what difference do a few people like that
make?
Perhaps 2nd round votes can be posted on the voting
pages
in two categories. Registered or anonymous. The anonymous
vote can be compared with the registered vote to see if
they differ signficantly. Having voting counted in two
categories should not be very complicated and the results
could then be posted so that Erick's proposal is embedded
into the second stage voting procedure; someone will not
have to spend lots of time analyzing data. We will see if there
is a wildly differing outcome between registered Wikipedians
and the public at large and can discuss it then. There will
also be some hard data to discuss beyond allegations.
What ever decision is taken then, we will know who was
the significant voting block, registered users or anyone who
comes onto the site and votes; objections to including the
public votes can be discussed then.
The entire process for choosing a logo has me ROTFWL. The only thing
that it's proving to me is what's wrong with voting.
Ec